


In Search Of Wonderland

by LyraInTheDark



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Bring Your Holy Hand Grenade, Complete, Death Has Fluffy Ears, F/M, Humor, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-12
Updated: 2013-03-16
Packaged: 2017-12-05 01:30:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 5,806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/717312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LyraInTheDark/pseuds/LyraInTheDark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A decade has passed since the end of Voldemort's second war, but calm surfaces do not always mean all is well beneath the water - and so it is that Draco Malfoy finds himself with a peculiar problem.  But then, Draco's always had a knack for getting himself into trouble...and this time Luna knows the way out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. What The Rabbit Thought Of Alice (And Could Not Say)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [velvet_sometimes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/velvet_sometimes/gifts).



"...So as it stands, there is nothing we can do. There is a reason why there are so few  _animagi_ , Lord Malfoy; there is a  _reason_  why it is  _not_  recommended that individuals attempt the transformation until they know  _everything_  about the animal into which they shall transform."

A snarl answered this pronouncement – an impressive one, considering that the one making it was less than two feet tall.

"Anger won't help things, Lord Malfoy; there must be something peculiar about your  _animagus_  form which prevents the influence of wizard magic from taking hold.  If that was not the case, the normal reversal would have worked the first time.  I'm afraid that until you manage to transform your _self_  into yourself that you will be...stuck this way."

Another snarl echoed around the room. The Saint Mungo's Healer responsible for tending to this rather demanding patient was quick to back toward the door and exit with a little bow in Lord Malfoy's direction.  He did  _not_  want to be the one to discover that the unidentifiable animal was venomous, or spat acid, or breathed fire -

The healer breathed a sigh of relief as he closed the door, and made his way down the hall to the duty station to make his report.  Behind him, Draco Malfoy, Lord of the Most Ancient House of Malfoy, scion of ancient bloodlines pure and untainted, sniffed in irritation at the disinfected hospital air and settled himself more firmly on the table.

His fangs glittered in the bright light; his eyes gleamed red and the pure, white softness of his coat shone with health...but he twitched his fuzzy ball of a tail and pawed at his long, rabbit ears, and wondered -

_What the hell have I become?_

There was a knock on the door then, and the Healer poked his head back in cautiously.

"Lord Malfoy, we've sent for a specialist from the Ministry, from the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, Beast Division. Hopefully they will be able to assist you in determining what your  _animagus_  form actually... _is_...and then we can work on finding further help for you at that time...?"

There was a twitch of tail and a flicker of ears.

The Healer took that for acquiescence and let himself back out into the hall.

Draco only quivered at the click of the door shutting, and continued to glare forward into space, gnashing his impressive assortment of teeth at no one.

Privately, he had already come to the conclusion that it had been a terrible idea to become an  _animagus_.  This form would be of no use to him; it was  _not_ what he had been expecting, neither from the meditaiton nor the potion!  

 _And if it takes until morning for my new...circumstances..._ _to find their way into the Daily Prophet, I'll be surprised.  For this, they'd print a special evening edition!_

He could see the headlines already  - the humiliation of his house and his ancestors would be extreme; his father would disown him; he would never be able to show his face in public again!

_And this after all the trouble I took to be sure even father wouldn't see me in such a state!_

The door opened again and he turned toward it reflexively – Merlin, but this body was jumpy – and saw in the door only a pale and luminescent sheet of blonde hair swinging back and forth, attracting his eye to a soft, feminine curve of back and buttocks.  

The red eyes widened, and Draco's thoughts jumped to a conclusion.

_So beautiful - a veela?_

But when the woman turned he saw that was not so, could not be, because he knew this girl –  _woman_ – knew her too-blue, too-wide, too-lovely eyes and all the shades of pain and bliss they wore.

"Hello, Draco.  My, you are in trouble, aren't you?"

It was  _Lovegood_.

_Luna._

The name barely registered inside him, even as it continued to reverberate, memory struck and ringing like a bell.  

He remained caught up in first moment of his correction.

_Too blue -_

_Too wide -_

_Too lovely -_

She looked at him silently, as if she knew what he could not say.


	2. What Alice Said To The Rabbit (While Keeping Her Thoughts To Herself)

This was, Luna thought, perfectly appropriate.

Draco Malfoy, lord and ambitious and snide and arrogant and all the things that he was, trapped in the shape of a... _broken_ beast?  Yes, this was exactly right....

Almost against her will, Luna's eye was caught by the twitching of his tail.  It was...puffy.  Poofy.   _Fluffy_ , even.  A perfect cotton-ball of a rabbit's tail that twitched in time with the pert, pink velvet  _wiffle_  of his sniffing nose.

Of course she knew the problem immediately; it was the fangs that had thrown the healers off during the identification process, the fangs always did.  She addressed him as if they were friends, close, familiar; she ignored the thoughts floating across the surface of his mind after the first few stunned and shattered her - she could wait until she asked him a question to  _see_ what the answer was.  The  _sight_   that was the greatest quirk of her witchly ancestry - vision that made the thoughts of beasts as clear to her as her own thoughts.

"Draco, by what chance did you happen to be turned into an  _Interfectorum Lepus_? I spend years with daddy trying to find one near Antioch, but none of the rumors seemed true."

He sat very still, and stared at her, and then turned purposefully around so that the cotton ball of his tail and the points of his ears were all she could see - but that did not protect him from what she could  _see_.

"Oh - oh.  Well it will be quite a useful  _animagus_  form as long as it isn't a curse; but Draco, it isn't wise to spend too much time in your _animagus_ form at first."

Draco shivered; his ears rose an inch or so, and then relaxed.

The tail continued to twitch.

"I'm not allowed to leave. Threatening me won't do any good -"

A flurry of furry violence and the dark probability of a blonde's demise manifested mid-sentence.  Draco raced for a hold on her throat with all his fangs bared, achieving a speed that came remarkably close to breaking the sound barrier.  He knew he was immune to any magic she would be able to think of – he _knew_ , the Healers had tried – and her throat was just so  _irresistible_.  

It was partially the rabbit's killer instinct...

But mostly he just wanted to shut her up.

She hadn't said  _anything_ to give herself away, but he knew what she was _thinking -_ fluffy, cuddly thoughts, insults to his dignity -

Her eyes had been fixed on his tail the whole  _bloody_  time!  And anyway -

_And anyway, what is she doing, reading my mind? Legilimencing me?  I'm a – I'm a – I'm a Killer Rabbit, for Merlin's sake -_

His thoughts and his carnivorous leap were both simultaneously interrupted, and he heard Luna speaking, dim words that came through the sudden onset of prickling haze.  He felt as if he had been hit with a bludger to the face.

"You _have_ been hit with a bludger to the face, Draco.  It's one of the nine ways  _Merlin's Magical Bestiary_  recommends managing the Killer Rabbit.  Do be careful; that was a rather harder hit than I expected."

Draco stayed very, very still where he had fallen on the floor.

"You needn't worry, I'm not a Legilimens; it's only my _sight_ that let's me know what you're thinking while you're an animal.  But no biting, Draco!  We're not nearly that well acquainted, even if you  _have_ seen me naked."

She smiled vaguely, but Draco was not sure if that was for her own reasons, or because she was in his head again.

_Life is not fair. Life is just...not fair at all._


	3. The Rememberings Of Rabbits (Tend To Come Mostly In Dreams)

Whether what Luna –  _Lovegood_  – had said was true or not, she stayed with Draco in the room he had been given in St. Mungo's, and went nowhere.  The room he had been sequestered in when he arrived, in the arms of a confused and somewhat conflicted House Elf, had its own loo attached and was apparently being kept undisturbed by the outside world.

Perhaps his fangs had disturbed that Healer more than he thought? 

_Or perhaps father has finally got wind of the situation and has decided to forget about me if I can't be helped._

For a moment – just a moment – he found the idea truly amusing – but then it only reminded him of the indignity and annoyance of his present state of being, and he proceeded to sulk.  Luna –  _Lovegood_  – why did he keep thinking of her in such familiar terms? -  was not interested in his behavior, being occupied with reading one of her father's eternally odd magazine publications.  Draco quickly discovered that sulking is tiring (and rather pointless) if one is not being observed.

Luna –  _Lovegood_  – _Lovegood – Lovegood –_  only turned her eyes toward him again when the dimness of his thoughts convinced her that he had finally sulked himself into sleep.  Draco caught the blue glimmer of her gaze at the edge of wakefulness, and brought it with him into his dreams - smugly.  But while he slept, Luna went to the edge of the table on which he still lay, and began to stroke the deadly softness of his fur.  She spoke quietly, so as not to wake him, but in conversational tones - as if he was still awake, as if he was not a rabbit, as if he might answer.

"You know, Draco, the _Interfectorum Lepus_ is a very interesting creature.  It isn't meant to be a killer – it's the only predatory rabbit, even among magical species, and even it isn't born from its mother with terrible fangs and bloodthirsty instincts.  As best as we can determine, the Killer Rabbit is a magical rabbit that has been forced to abandon its previous nature...but no one knows how it happens.

"I think you can't transform back into yourself, because that is the nature of what you are, what you have become.  I think your  _animagus_ shape is some other kind of magical rabbit - but because you have abandoned your  _own_  nature, to become something with fangs that have no purpose but to steal life - because you have done that, your  _animagus_ has become a killer too.

"You have to remember yourself, Draco.  You have to be what you were meant to be."

Her voice winds and echoes down into Draco's dreams, but he does not _hear_ what she says there.  There, he is back in time, back ten years before in the worst days of the neverending-endless-war.  Before  _Potter_  had achieved his last bit of glory.  Before the last hopes of his parents and their fellows had faded forever -

She had really been Lovegood in those days, not  _Luna_.  Lovegood, whose name he knew only because it was pureblood, and there were not many of those families left.  Lovegood, who was called _loony_ more often than not -

But he could not call her that, could not call her that -  because his father called her Lovegood, but Aunt Bella chanted  _loony loony loony loony_ until he thought his ears would crack; from that, or from the silence, because Luna did not speak or scream or cry.  Luna, who became Luna halfway through her torture because he could not call her what his father called her, what his aunt called her.  He never heard her voice; she would not utter a word; in his mind, she became a martyr of silence and light, and though he did not see her face the vision of it haunted him - haggard and pale and lovely. 

And one night, when he couldn't take it any more, he went down to the cell of this girl who had walked the hall of Hogwarts with him, and left a clean, refilling bucket of cold, clear water; a plate of sandwiches that she could hide – a cracked, old cup no one would miss, but that was still whole enough to drink from.

She stood up right in front of him and took the filthy, ripped robes from her body; she stood naked and gleaming, soft mounds of breasts and moonstruck hair – she took that bucket and held it over her head and let the water cascade down, and down, and down, and down -

In the dream, as in life, Draco watches her for a long time, and then turn and lets her be.

The sound of the water follows him up the stairs and through the winding corridors of his dreams.

 


	4. The Dreams Of Alice Are Dreams Indeed (Except When They Are Memory)

There had been a time Luna had thought she would never be clean again. There had been a time – weeks or months, she had never been able to count the days – when she had believed that there were stains that could not be washed away, flotsam and jetsam that would splash around in the soul and disappear for a while, only to wash up in front of the eyes at the strangest moments.

Luna is thinking about this because she can see the dream that Draco is dreaming; he has the mind of a man but his body is that of a beast, and everything about him floats too close to the surface now. She sees herself at her most desperate moment through the eyes of an outsider, and wonders why it is that he sees her as  _luminous_  -

But she is reminded that she asked for this assignment because of that very moment; because she is qualified, perhaps the only one qualified, but also because she owes him, personally, for one instant in which her faith in herself and in mankind had been restored.

_An act of kindness from an enemy..._

One bucket of water, one endless, welling flow of cold water – so cold, cold enough to have come from some deep spring set high in the mountains; cold as meltwater from a glacier but clear and clean and perfect.

She could still taste it, still feel it running over her skin if she thought hard enough about it. She had tried many times, but she had never been able to conjure the same thing for herself; even the strongest focus on that cold memory could not bring it into her hands. She, like, Draco, knew it only in her dreams...and dreams are a poor substitute for reality.

Still, she was encouraged that his case was not too hopeless. For a moment, with a glimmering of magic, his fursh one pale gold instead of white; for a moment, deadly fangs receded and the long, stirring whiskers gained a platinum gleam.

The moment coincided with the memory – with the silence that had passed between them, she beneath a waterfall that had scrubbed her clean down to her soul, and he beneath a cascade of something he has not known since.

Near morning she dozed, and like a spring, the water ran from Draco's dreams to hers.  

She awoke refreshed, and with an urgent need to pee.

Draco had been awake since dawn, watching Luna; he had dreamed other things, he knew, but only she remained in his memory, as if calling out to him.  It was not a time in his life that he liked to dwell on, and that incident above all had been terrible - Luna, Granger, the Wandmaker, captives in _his_ house, the house he still lived in - 

He shuddered.

It was when Luna came back from the loo that she noticed a change in him that had not vanished with the dream.

"Draco – your eyes are blue!"

He turned, and stared at his reflection on the glass of the room's single window, and saw that it was true.


	5. The Rabbit Hunts For Greener Grass (It Is Well Known Where That Grows)

Draco's immediate hope, considering that nothing had been done to him during the night, was that the transformation was beginning to wear off on its own. He considered that perhaps he might eventually run out of magic to sustain it, and then revert to his own body -

"No, Draco, it doesn't work that way. Who taught you about magic?"

Luna is staring at him with her wide, pale eyes; hair always falls from behind her right ear to cover her right eye, and she is always pushing it back again.  His eyes track the motion, but he thinks about her question.

_Who taught me about magic?_

When he was little, young enough that he could barely speak, he remembers being told about his own nature, about magic and the world, about blood and what lies within it -

"But you know that's all nonsense, don't you? Magic isn't in the blood, it's in  _all_ of you. Every bit, every particle of being; blood and bone, skin and organs – mind and body and soul, all of it. If magic could wear out of you that way...well, it does, but not until you die, and even then it takes a long, long time."

Scowling, snarling, for the first time Draco directs his thoughts purposefully in her direction –  _you, Luna – how do you know this, you, how would -_

"You mean because I'm not good enough to know so much that's true, but that you can't prove – that's it, isn't it?  Not good enough, because my blood may be pure, but it is not _high_ enough for you?   Not close enough  _ancient secrets_?  But you know the truth, Draco. You learned it through your own eyes and ears.  You saw the muggleborn girl who could learn any spell, faster than Merlin; you saw the halfblood boy who destroyed your halfblood master.  You know, don't you Draco - the truth?"

And the one million things that come flooding across his thoughts amuse her and startle her and make her smile; so many times, a luminous vision of her – and there is Snape, Snape, advising Draco to form his own opinions, to take off the dark glasses that his father had bound across his vision – and Dumbledore, the Headmaster standing before Draco and smiling at the point of his wand, and saying  _No_.  No, you will not do this, because you are not a killer.  _Not a killer_.

The essential nature of Draco Malfoy revealed itself like the opening petals of a battered flower.  Luna saw the absence of aggression, the killing instinct that is the method and the madness of the slayers among men -

And _Draco_ saw it. He saw the truth, deep inside himself; too raw and painful a wound, too deep to share with so much of a stranger as this  _Luna_.

And she saw this, and so she began to speak.


	6. Alice Knows Where Green Grows  (Sometimes The Grass Is Very Far Indeed)

"When I was nine years old, my mother died. She was not killed – was not murdered - she was experimenting with something new.  She loved to play with magic, but that day it went quite extraordinarily wrong. My father couldn't bear to blame her, so he blamed the Nargles instead – but I knew, because she had told me, that sometimes being careful is not enough."

Her eyes were not on him, but he felt her words as a descending weight.

"Everyone makes mistakes."

Draco heard the echo of his father speaking behind his consciousness, telling him the same thing, but with that inevitable caveat -

_Everyone makes mistakes, but Malfoys are not everyone._

He knew Luna could hear him – what he was thinking, the roil of confusion that had been dredged up in him – but she just kept speaking, going on in her calm, implacable way; the way she had always spoken to everyone when she was not making light of the truth with nonsense.

"It took me a long time to accept my mother's mistake; an entire year, and longer – because I was so young, I think, and because the truth is never the thing we want to confront; sometimes we pick something more painful just to distract us. Do you know what I mean, Draco?

"It was like that all the time that Voldemort had me captive; Bellatrix was very inventive, but she didn't know the things about me that could really hurt me. Only I did, and by the time she was through I had nowhere to go but into worse thoughts than what they had done...there wasn't really anything, though, after a while. Just earlier memories of other tortures, and that day my mother died, and sometimes...

She took a deep breath.

"Sometimes, depending on what was done to me, I thought the worst gift of all was the gift that was the reason they had taken me."

And she smiled then, sensing his surprise, his confusion.

"Not my  _sight_ , Draco. That was a useless thing for Voldemort's purposes, and he feared a seer with all that was left of his soul. No...I had been taken because of  _Harry's_  gift.  _Friendship.._.it's a kind of love, you know? And I had given up hope and faith in it until you came, and brought me water -"

And the smile grew wider on her face as his thoughts wandered.

"Yes, and sandwiches too, Draco. I ate them, later. But it was the water – it was  _you_  that saved me."

He stared very intently into her eyes, seeking the mystery of how she could be mocking him, for he had never saved anyone or anything in his life. Hadn't had the desire to -

But his own thoughts betrayed him, for he could not help but listen to them when he knew that Luna could too.

_Fire, screaming after his friend – girls in the Slytherin dormitories, half-raped and grateful to be rescued from a brute – the life he could not take - "You are not a killer, Draco -" - a kneazle kitten found motherless and left with the gamekeeper, that oaf – Luna, who had suffered at his father's hands, Luna pouring that water down over her skin as if it could heal all wounds -_

Damn it, but  _hadn't had the desire_  wasn't true; it had never been true. He had wanted to save  _everyone_ ,  _always_ , but he had never been given a chance, had never been as good at it as he wanted, and he was always too proud, too arrogant -

_I was a fool._

And Luna smiles and says not a word; he can see the change for himself this time, the shivering of magic across his fur that is the passage of shimmering gold taking the place of the dim, white color.


	7. When The Rabbit Is Gold He Glitters  (But That Is Not The Most Beautiful Thing)

The change stays, and as it happens and Draco feels the shift inside himself, he knows again the meaning of the  _truth_. This is a deeper change, a deeper suffering than any potion or wandwork could tear from him; this is not the truth of  _veritaserum_  but the kind that comes from behind and below the heartbeat; the kind that resonates and leaves a shiver on the skin.

He is becoming  _himself_ , for the first time in his life; he is settling his thoughts without the shield of false belief, without the aid of things that he has known for a decade and more to be patently untrue -

There is no more need to hide his hope, or hang his future with the ghosts of his past.

_Everything dark that dreamed inside me was a lie, except the lie itself._

He stares at Luna, shivering in his fur, and lets her reach out and stroke the soft length of his ears, down his back along the golden fur that shimmers under her touch. He wants to speak to her, wants to be able to order his thoughts without sending them out to her mishandled and unorganized and full of secret feelings; there is a jumble inside him, and she knows it already. He is changing quickly – maybe too quickly -

Maybe not quickly enough?

Draco sleeps, and wakes, and sleeps, and wakes – a week of days, wondering, waiting, thinking and listening; each day, a Healer comes three times a day with food for Luna and food for him. Each day, Luna shares with him a story.

What really happened at the meetings of the so-famous Dumbledore's Army -

What it was the sorting hat heard and saw upon her head -

The names of the few she called friends in Hogwarts -

The Giant Squid's favorite places to have scratched -

A trip she had made to Sweden once with her father -

The truth about magical creatures the world could not see -

What it meant to have  _sight_ , and when it had first come to her -

Days she remembered from the bliss of childhood, before pain had taught her its meaning.

Some are stories he knows from the other side, and with thoughts that spin out wildly among the strands of memory, he responds, shares, opens – he has no choice, cannot keep his brain from thinking – it is all that sustains him, the fact that while his body may be changed, beneath the golden fur and mask of fangs he is still Draco – even if he is not sure, as the days pass, that he is still  _Malfoy_  -

Not a Malfoy his father would understand, or agree to; not a bigot, not blind, his eyes open now and turned toward -

But that is a thought that Draco shuts off before it can tumble him into  _more_ trouble, and if Luna is surprised by that, she does not say a thing.


	8. Alice Who Disbelieves In Beauty (Until She Shines Brighter Than Gold)

Their swift progress in restoring Draco to something like normal is pleasing to Luna, but there is a hint of regret in that pleasure because ending this time with him will send her back to the everyday world she lives in – a world in which she fits no better than she did at Hogwarts.

Adults are less cruel than children in some ways, and more cruel in others; there are laws among adults to protect her clothes and her shoes, her jewelry and her favorite eagle-feather quill...but there are no laws about whispers, about old nicknames that cause new pain, about old silences that swell up and refuse to vanish in the name of  _please_.

She can tell, talking to him, listening to the shifting flurry of his thoughts, that Draco is changing – more than she hoped, more than she believed possible. The first day, there had only been a single memory giving her hope that he might actually achieve some kind of freedom, some escape from the shape he had trapped himself in unknowing -

And then there had been progress, quick and sharp and obvious and encouraging, even if now she knew he woke every morning disappointed that the furious fangs were still gleaming from beneath his twitching nose. All she knows is that there must be some final admission – that whatever he is still holding back, it is the keystone, the tumbler jammed in the lock, the last piece of the puzzle to set him free. She wonders if there is anything else she can say, anything else she can share that will help him, but she has no more memories, no more gifts of wisdom, only feelings and stories to give now.

The stories are easy enough; she has, if nothing else, lived an _interesting_  life. Interesting is good; it draws Draco out of self-pity and frustration and despair, it lets him know her, and the more he knows her the more he trusts her and is willing to share.

It did not take him long to catch on to how much of his  _self_  lies open to her, but he has become aware that the only way to keep her from knowing a thing is not to think of a thing...

So she tells her tales, and lets him listen, and keeps the secrets she is learning to herself.

The feelings, though -

Occasionally, she speaks of them; occasionally, she talks of love, and longing, of life and death, of friendship and family -

But not often. There is a blankness in Draco's eyes that scares her aware from those words; a blankness in his  _thoughts_  that scares her even more. It occurs to her after a week what is happening inside him; that the feelings he has turned off have been left that way for a long, long time.

This is the last piece of the puzzle she has been looking for, and which she does not yet know how to touch. She  _knows_ ; everything withing the whirlwind of his being tells her this, even as the other things he is thinking defy all belief.

_Luna – in the darkness – in the manor – Luna, under the hands of my father – under the hands of my aunt – luminous Luna – how did she shine, then? How was I enough to change the agony and_ _give her back hope?_

_Luna, it was just water._

_I was never good, even then._

_I stared -_

_I watched when I should have turned away._

_Luminous Luna, I saw -_

_But it was just water, after all._

_Just water, that's not enough -_

_That's not enough to make me fall in love - or you - or -_

_Is it?_


	9. The Rabbit Knows Late Is Better Than Never (For The Sake Of Coming Prepared)

It is on the eleventh night of their time together that Luna catches so much of the truth from him. His thought is a question he would never ask aloud, but has not been able to stop himself from wondering, a thought that rasps again and again at her awareness until the answer makes itself known within her, a sweet, smooth-surfaced wound.

_Could she love me? If I love her – but...could she love me?_

Draco's thoughts were enough to wash away the sins of his father; still, they were not enough for Draco to wash away his  _sins as the son_. There is a burning inside him and in his own shape it would have been tears; it is guilt, and regret, and the wish that he had done other things, or done the things that he had chosen  _better_.

Like Luna, he knows what it is like to have no friends – but it was all his fault,  _his_  fault that he never knew love in any shape at all. His mother had offered it to him, and he had rejected it to follow in his father's footsteps; his aunt had offered it to him, and he had rejected it because by then those footsteps had been fully visible to him.  He had seen that the tracks were full of blood, that all she was, and his father was, was truly repellent to him. Once or twice a schoolmate had turned to him, and despite his own desire to love and to be loved, he had rejected them – because there was too much vulnerability in admitting he wanted someone to care...because he had still been waiting, for no reason at all, for someone to tell him that he had been  _chosen_.

There had never been romance – there had only been Pansy clinging, her eyes not on him but on the mountains of gold heaped behind the Malfoy name...and Daphne...and Astoria...and several others, all the same...

Except Luna, who he had fallen in love with in her agony, who he had never seen at her best, who he had known for so long as only an illuminated outline, a soft enfleshment of everything lovely and precious that could beckon his spirit awake -

Not perfect, his Luna, not an  _ordinary_  beauty, but exactly what he wanted – what he needed, just as much as the truth.

"But I am no beauty at all, Draco -"

She sensed a whirl of angry confusion and embarrassment that was beyond and behind his many thoughts. There was only one thing she could think to say that might calm and quiet him, even if it opened up an endless saga of sorrows for her to say it.

"And I do love you – I  _do_  love you.   There is no _if_ or  _could_ about it.  Because you stood and stared. Because you watched when you might have turned away –"

The tears come from nowhere, enough for both of them, and run over her cheeks and her fingers as she tries to wipe them away.

"Did you think I had come for no reason?  Draco -"


	10. Alice Was Prepared For Ever After (Never Came Along Too Late For Tea)

Draco shivers, twitches, hops close to her and presses himself against her breast; he turns his rabbit-face up to her cheek, and licks at the tears as they fall, and listens to her sobs feeling that his heart might break.  He could save her, if he was only himself again – he could tell her all the truths she needs to hear. He does not even notice the moment in which the gnashing fangs have vanished; there is too much howling within him, too much longing, too much pain.

"It's just water, Draco, just water -"

And Draco is changing then, as if those were the magic words. He is changing, becoming, stretching, elongating, his body responding to his will and the will of his magic as it should have done all along.

He comes into his own flesh speaking, with words on his lips that wrap around Luna even as his arms do, holding her close, steadying her body as she rocks with sobs; he presses his lips against her mouth, tastes the salt of her tears on his own tongue, the chocolate that she had been eating while she sat beside him, talking – something clear and clean and perfect, something that is unnameable except as Luna or a thousand things.

_So it must be - Luna_.

She is luminous now as she was _then_ ; even her tears seem glowing to him, and Draco grasps her hands so tightly she gasps in pain and sets his heart thumping with memory.

"You would've repaid your debt, you know – except you didn't have one. You could've paid me back for saving you by saving me – except that all I did was conjure you a bucket of water. You could've just turned away and let what was, be – except that I love you, Luna."

He gives more of a kiss to her this time; his words are still echoing in her head, and she tastes sweet water and sunshine – incongruous, incomprehensible.

When he steps back, his hands are still on her hands, their fingers twining around each other as if by instinct.  Luna is trembling, but the only feeling she knows in that moment is joy.

"Luna? Are you...all right?"

"Yes, I'm fine. Draco – conjure me a bucket of water, will you? Only...I've been trying for years, and I've never been able to get it quite right."

She stands, and reaches to the shoulder of her robe, and undoes the fastening there.

"I should have known it wasn't the  _water_ that I was missing – just you."

Draco reaches for the wand in his sleeve.  He conjures a plain wooden bucket full of water, and a plate of sandwiches.

"For  _after_ ," he explains.

Luna smiles, and glows.


End file.
